As leaders within Nepali Congress struggle for better slots in the second generation, the very concept of generation has come to a head following the Congress's first-ever Parliamentary Party election, writes Jagadish Pokhrel.
At a meeting with reporters in late March, Finance Minister Mahesh Acharya took exception when a journalist introduced him as the Nepali Congress's third generation leader.
"I represent this, present generation," Acharya said with emphasis. "It may be a controversial statement to slot me in the third generation."
Acharya, who took extra pains to relate his political career as beginning since he left school and even before that some three decades ago, was only competing for a slot in the second generation, a debatable and vaguely understood classification of the Congress leaders.
The first generation means the feuding old friends, 76-year-old Girija Prasad Koirala and a year younger Krishna Prasad Bhattarai. In a ceaseless power game within the party, the first generation leaders probably finished their last battle when Bhattarai was forced to cede power as Prime Minister on March 16. Koirala won the battle to become the country's Prime Minister for a record fourth time after the restoration of multiparty democracy in 1990.
As the first generation has perhaps written its major part of the Congress history, some clearly identified second generation stalwarts such as Congress General Secretary Sushil Koirala, former Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba, Deputy Prime Minister Ram Chandra Poudel and the firebrand woman leader Shailaja Acharya are clamouring for attention and staking a claim to lead the oldest party in Nepal. Miss Acharya has already announced she would fight it out for the post of Party President.
However, as these and many other leaders within Nepali Congress struggle for better slots in the second generation, the very concept of generation has come to a head following the Congress's first-ever Parliamentary Party election.
Two weeks ago on March 18, Sher Bahadur Deuba, a second generation leader and Bhattarai loyalist, offered candidacy against Congress President Koirala in a vote for the Parliamentary Party leader. This has effectively ended the Congress era, when consensus or sahamati among the first generation leaders ruled supreme, and has started a process for a greater inner-party democracy.
The developments leading up to the election were the fallout of an unkept sahamati or consensus between party President Koirala and Bhattarai, who met in a scenic resort at Godavari, a few kilometres south east of Kathmandu, to decide the strategy for the Party to go to the May 1999 general elections.
It is widely believed the Sahamati 'mandated' Bhattarai to head the government and Koirala to lead the party until some unspecified time. Problem started in December 1999 when 78 Congress lawmakers initialed signatures against Bhattarai charging him with failure to run the government and deal with the Maoist insurgency, which has claimed over 1250 lives since it started in the western mid-hills in February 1996.
"Under pressure" from the MPs, Koirala asked Bhattarai to step down at a central committee meeting of the party the same month, widening their differences.
Surprisingly, Finance Minister Acharya, who is well known for his loyalty to Koirala, was the one to defend Bhattarai saying that five months were not enough time to review the government's performance.
Acharya later resigned in late January this year over differences with Prime Minister Bhattarai regarding the appointment of governor for the Nepal Rastra Bank or the central bank of Nepal.
In mid-February fifty-eight lawmakers again said they did not trust Bhattarai as their Parliamentary Party leader and registered a motion to vote him out. Another closed door Sahamati, reached on February 25 between Koirala and Bhattarai, put off the crisis. A joint statement signed by the two top Congress leaders that day said: "We have reached an agreement as regards the no-trust motion against the Prime Minister." Nobody else knew the details.
That agreement, however, left Bhattarai without 11 senior ministers, who had quit "under moral grounds" in the wake of dissension against their Parliamentary Party Leader Bhattarai.
The lawmakers, who withdrew the motion following the agreement, renewed pressure against the Prime Minister in less than three weeks. Sixty-nine MPs called a Parliamentary Party meeting and moved another motion against Bhattarai on getting hints that the Prime Minister was buying time, planning France visit as an excuse to escape the mid-March deadline for him to resign.
Koirala and his loyalists were already taken aback when Bhattarai appointed a ministerial committee headed by the Deputy Prime Minister at a time they were expecting his resignation. Bhattarai's strategies to escape resignation as the Prime Minister under the pact with Koirala failed one after another and he was forced to bow down to pressure from the rebels.
On March 16, Bhattarai quit in a televised address to the nation, which insisted the power should go to the younger generation. Bhattarai's statement was meant to block Koirala's chances for takeover as the Prime Minister. Deuba drew strength from this statement to challenge his political guru Koirala in the ensuing Parliamentary Party election.
Koirala managed to get the support of 69 Congress lawmakers to become the Congress's Parliamentary Party leader. His rival Deuba secured 43 of the 113 Congress votes in the House of Representatives.
In these developments, Deuba's candidacy against Koirala may have "established" him as the prominent Second Generation Leader, but he is far from being accepted as a unanimous choice to replace Bhattarai and Koirala, who have started the process of handing down leadership to their younger colleagues in their own way.
Koirala, who as the Prime Minister holds six other ministries, has asked Shailaja to take over as the Acting President. Her announcement to contest for Presidency in the impending party election only attests to the fact that the battle for claiming leadership stake is suddenly open to all, irrespective of generations or blessings from the party bosses. The Koirala-Deuba intergenerational clash has ended the hierarchy by age for leadership -- that's what Finance Minister Acharya was hinting at when he addressed the press shortly after Koirala formed the government on March 18.
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• Nepali Congress Home Page
Write us your opinion about this article at feedback@newslookmag.com
At a meeting with reporters in late March, Finance Minister Mahesh Acharya took exception when a journalist introduced him as the Nepali Congress's third generation leader.
"I represent this, present generation," Acharya said with emphasis. "It may be a controversial statement to slot me in the third generation."
Acharya, who took extra pains to relate his political career as beginning since he left school and even before that some three decades ago, was only competing for a slot in the second generation, a debatable and vaguely understood classification of the Congress leaders.
The first generation means the feuding old friends, 76-year-old Girija Prasad Koirala and a year younger Krishna Prasad Bhattarai. In a ceaseless power game within the party, the first generation leaders probably finished their last battle when Bhattarai was forced to cede power as Prime Minister on March 16. Koirala won the battle to become the country's Prime Minister for a record fourth time after the restoration of multiparty democracy in 1990.
As the first generation has perhaps written its major part of the Congress history, some clearly identified second generation stalwarts such as Congress General Secretary Sushil Koirala, former Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba, Deputy Prime Minister Ram Chandra Poudel and the firebrand woman leader Shailaja Acharya are clamouring for attention and staking a claim to lead the oldest party in Nepal. Miss Acharya has already announced she would fight it out for the post of Party President.
However, as these and many other leaders within Nepali Congress struggle for better slots in the second generation, the very concept of generation has come to a head following the Congress's first-ever Parliamentary Party election.
Two weeks ago on March 18, Sher Bahadur Deuba, a second generation leader and Bhattarai loyalist, offered candidacy against Congress President Koirala in a vote for the Parliamentary Party leader. This has effectively ended the Congress era, when consensus or sahamati among the first generation leaders ruled supreme, and has started a process for a greater inner-party democracy.
The developments leading up to the election were the fallout of an unkept sahamati or consensus between party President Koirala and Bhattarai, who met in a scenic resort at Godavari, a few kilometres south east of Kathmandu, to decide the strategy for the Party to go to the May 1999 general elections.
It is widely believed the Sahamati 'mandated' Bhattarai to head the government and Koirala to lead the party until some unspecified time. Problem started in December 1999 when 78 Congress lawmakers initialed signatures against Bhattarai charging him with failure to run the government and deal with the Maoist insurgency, which has claimed over 1250 lives since it started in the western mid-hills in February 1996.
"Under pressure" from the MPs, Koirala asked Bhattarai to step down at a central committee meeting of the party the same month, widening their differences.
Surprisingly, Finance Minister Acharya, who is well known for his loyalty to Koirala, was the one to defend Bhattarai saying that five months were not enough time to review the government's performance.
Acharya later resigned in late January this year over differences with Prime Minister Bhattarai regarding the appointment of governor for the Nepal Rastra Bank or the central bank of Nepal.
In mid-February fifty-eight lawmakers again said they did not trust Bhattarai as their Parliamentary Party leader and registered a motion to vote him out. Another closed door Sahamati, reached on February 25 between Koirala and Bhattarai, put off the crisis. A joint statement signed by the two top Congress leaders that day said: "We have reached an agreement as regards the no-trust motion against the Prime Minister." Nobody else knew the details.
That agreement, however, left Bhattarai without 11 senior ministers, who had quit "under moral grounds" in the wake of dissension against their Parliamentary Party Leader Bhattarai.
The lawmakers, who withdrew the motion following the agreement, renewed pressure against the Prime Minister in less than three weeks. Sixty-nine MPs called a Parliamentary Party meeting and moved another motion against Bhattarai on getting hints that the Prime Minister was buying time, planning France visit as an excuse to escape the mid-March deadline for him to resign.
Koirala and his loyalists were already taken aback when Bhattarai appointed a ministerial committee headed by the Deputy Prime Minister at a time they were expecting his resignation. Bhattarai's strategies to escape resignation as the Prime Minister under the pact with Koirala failed one after another and he was forced to bow down to pressure from the rebels.
On March 16, Bhattarai quit in a televised address to the nation, which insisted the power should go to the younger generation. Bhattarai's statement was meant to block Koirala's chances for takeover as the Prime Minister. Deuba drew strength from this statement to challenge his political guru Koirala in the ensuing Parliamentary Party election.
Koirala managed to get the support of 69 Congress lawmakers to become the Congress's Parliamentary Party leader. His rival Deuba secured 43 of the 113 Congress votes in the House of Representatives.
In these developments, Deuba's candidacy against Koirala may have "established" him as the prominent Second Generation Leader, but he is far from being accepted as a unanimous choice to replace Bhattarai and Koirala, who have started the process of handing down leadership to their younger colleagues in their own way.
Koirala, who as the Prime Minister holds six other ministries, has asked Shailaja to take over as the Acting President. Her announcement to contest for Presidency in the impending party election only attests to the fact that the battle for claiming leadership stake is suddenly open to all, irrespective of generations or blessings from the party bosses. The Koirala-Deuba intergenerational clash has ended the hierarchy by age for leadership -- that's what Finance Minister Acharya was hinting at when he addressed the press shortly after Koirala formed the government on March 18.
Web Links
• Nepali Congress Home Page
Write us your opinion about this article at feedback@newslookmag.com
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